Columns

The Healdsburg Senior Center has been serving the community

July 1 is the start of a new fiscal year for local governments. This is when the county, cities and schools start spending new tax money based on recently approved 2016-2017 budgets. All these budgets tend to launch with the same conclusions: there is never enough tax revenue; there are too many unmet needs; employee and pension costs keep going up; and everything could be solved if we only agreed to raise new taxes and vote for more long term debt bonds.

I remember when I first became a mother. The year was 2002 and it was truly life changing. Then it happened again in 2003, and again in 2007, and for the last time, in 2015. I am the proud parent of four wonderful children, two of them are teenagers. I often remember my parents saying throughout the years, “Just wait Elizabeth, just wait until they are teenagers.” Well, incredibly, that time has come. I find myself now in a very exciting, very scary, very important time with my two older children. There will be no other time in their lives or mine, when they will experience such rapid growth and maturity.